At the annual general meeting, Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, rejected criticism from investors that it was phasing out combustion technology too slowly and not concentrating entirely on pure electric cars. The company wants to align its strategy for electromobility with the wishes of customers and therefore also continue to offer hybrid vehicles.
“The goal is CO2 neutrality,” affirmed CTO Masahiko Maeda. However, customers must be offered a selection that the car manufacturer does not want to limit. After all, hybrid vehicles also served to make electromobility more popular.Toyota has dominated the market for these vehicles over the past 20 years with its Prius hybrid model, which combines a conventional combustion engine with an electric motor without offering external charging Respect also earned from environmentalists. But recently the company has come under criticism for sticking to combustion engine technology. This came at the general meeting from the Danish fund AkademikerPension. The investor also accused the world’s largest car manufacturer in terms of sales of using lobbying to obstruct the breakthrough of pure electric mobility. Toyota sold 10.5 million cars last year, putting it well ahead of Volkswagen. The Japanese carmaker announced in 2021 that it would invest eight trillion yen (around 57 billion euros) in expanding its electric mobility offering by 2030.
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